Publishing a book 6

Part 1 Access

Chapter 1: Disability Studies: Collaborative Mission 21
1.
Disability Studies: Why We Need It 23
2.
What is Disability Studies? 30

Chapter 2: How "Damage" Becomes "Disability" 47
1.
Questioning the category of disabled people 49
2.
People become disabled because they are discriminated against 59
3.
Disability issues are not the problem of the disabled 78

Part 2 Reflection

Chapter 3: The Age of Eugenics Is Not Over 87
1.
The Reality of Eugenics, Which Swept the First Half of the 20th Century
2.
Eugenics Puts on a New Frontier 121
3.
The Eugenics Society: Eugenics Through the Backdoor 139

Chapter 4: Peter Singer's Animal Liberation: Liberation or Another Discrimination? 161
1.
Anthropocentrism Justifies Discrimination and Hierarchy 163
2.
Peter Singer's Animal Liberation: The Persistent Hierarchy and Ranking 168
3.
We are all connected 184
4.
Epilogue: Philosopher's Nightmare 195

Chapter 5: What Does Justice Mean for People with Disabilities? 199
Reading Fraser's Theory of Justice Through the Lens of Disability Politics
1.
We need both 'distribution' and 'recognition' 204
2.
How to Move Beyond the Identity Model 217
3.
Disabled Persons, Excluded from Participation 226
4.
The Politics of Human Rights: Re-Questioning the Boundaries of Justice 234

3rd part transition

Chapter 6: Beyond the Illusion of Party-ism: Toward a Politics of Transversality 253
: Understanding the Disability Rights Critically
1.
What is Disability Rights? 258
2.
Are your liberation and mine separate? 268
3.
The Politics of Transversality: Rooting and Moving Again 276
4.
Partisanship is not the movement's "ideology" 284
Boron Identity: Dismantle or Transcend? 289

Chapter 7: Beyond the Dichotomy of Self-Reliance and Dependence, Towards a World of Symbiosis 299
1.
Establishment: 'Repairing' Unclean Bodies 303
2.
Self-Reliance: Its Potential and Pitfalls 308
3.
Coalition: Standing Together, Not Alone or Dependent 315

Part 4 Challenge

Chapter 8: Self-Determination: The Right Between You and Me 333
: Self-determination from a coalition perspective
1.
Enjoying things according to one's ability is not a right 338
2.
Self-determination, the right to make your own decisions? 343
3.
Self-determination is a social right 350
4.
Who's Talking About Adult Guardianship? 356

Chapter 9: Towards a Labor Society for All 361
1.
Disabled Persons as Unrecognized Workers 366
2.
Why is this not labor? 370
3.
The Struggle for Recognition of Social Values ​​377
4.
Beyond the Labor Market: A Public Citizen Labor System 387

Reference 403
Search 414

Is the disabled person's body the problem?
Is the problem a society that discriminates against people with disabilities?
Nine Journeys to Disability Liberation

“People who are defined by the problem can redefine the problem.
“When you have power, the revolution begins.”

Kim Do-hyeon, a teacher at the Noddle Night School for the Disabled and a researcher at the Noddle Disability Studies Institute, who emphasized that 'disability' should be viewed as a 'social product' rather than an impairment existing in the 'individual body' through books such as 'Do You Know Disability?' and 'Reading Disability Studies Together,' has returned with a new book after 10 years.
Through his numerous publications and translations, Kim Do-hyun has sharply analyzed aspects of a society centered on non-disabled people, while also actively introducing various foreign theories that open up new ways of thinking about disability.
In my new book, “The Challenge of Disability Studies,” I attempted to look at society from the perspective of those at the very bottom of the human hierarchy, including people with disabilities.
Through this "peripheral perspective," the book dissects prejudiced thinking toward people with disabilities and minorities, while also directly addressing the most pressing issues facing disability in our society today.
It weaves together crucial and controversial topics, including the still-dominant logic and system of "eugenics," the social oppression and exclusion experienced by people with disabilities, and the independence, self-determination, and labor of people with disabilities.
Let's follow the author's meticulous insights, as he has devoted himself to the ongoing struggle to "eliminate discrimination against people with disabilities" and to research without neglecting any aspect of it.

Exploring the Society That Creates Disabilities
We often think of people with disabilities as people who have suffered some physical damage and are unable to perform certain activities.
In other words, the dominant way of perceiving a disabled person is as ‘a person who cannot do something because of a physical impairment.’
This explanation, which undoubtedly seems reasonable, is the definition of disability specified by the World Health Organization (WHO) (International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps, ICIDH).
But is that really the case? Disability studies precisely exposes a gap in this smooth logic.
The question is whether the cause of that 'cannot be done' is truly a physical or mental damage to the individual's body.
Let's think about it this way.
It's virtually impossible for wheelchair users to board regular city buses. According to the WHO's ICIDH criteria, these individuals are ineligible for these buses because of their physical impairments.
However, with the enactment of the Act on Promotion of Transportation Convenience for the Transportation Disadvantaged in 2005, low-floor buses were deployed in Korea, and people with disabilities who also use wheelchairs can now ride low-floor buses.
When a person with the same injury can perform the same action of 'riding a bus' in some cases (regular city buses) and in other cases (low-floor buses), can we really say that the cause of 'not being able to ride a bus' is due to the injury existing in the individual's body?
Rather, we need to focus on the social conditions that prevent people with the same impairment from riding or being able to ride the bus.
Why does the "impairment" a particular individual possesses translate beyond the impairment itself into a disability—an inability to do something? Disability studies focuses on the specific relationships that transform "impairment" into "disability."
This relationship is precisely a 'discriminatory' and 'oppressive' relationship, and it is not much different from the way other minorities, such as blacks or women, are excluded.
People are not discriminated against because they are disabled, they become disabled because they are discriminated against.
If this happens, the direction for solving the disability problem will also change completely.
If the root cause of disability is defined as 'damage', then the solution is simply to 'repair' the damage in the body.
However, if we share the insight that social discrimination and oppression ultimately turn 'impairment' into 'disability,' then only changing the very structures of discrimination and oppression can be a true solution.
It is time for all members of society to take to heart the catchphrase of the '420 Struggle to Eliminate Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities': "A revolution begins when those defined by the problem have the power to redefine that problem."

The 20th century of humanity dominated by eugenics
Throughout human history, certain abnormalities or damage to the body have always been indicators of 'inferiority'.
The history of turning ‘damage’ into ‘disability’ is that long.
Even the ancient philosopher Plato said that a judicial and medical system should be legislated to allow for the direct execution of "people with incurable mental defects" (Book 3 of The Republic).
Above all, Western society's long-standing desire to improve the quality of its race and create better human beings speaks volumes to us.
What underpins eugenics is the belief that artificial selection is necessary to create a superior human species.
It is no exaggeration to say that the 20th century was truly the 'age of eugenics.'
After Darwin formalized the theory of 'natural selection through struggle for existence' in 'The Origin of Species' in 1859, 'social Darwinism', which attempts to explain human society from an evolutionary perspective, began to spread in England.
Of course, it would be more fair to say that the logic of 'competition' and 'elimination' itself was the zeitgeist that dominated the society in which Darwin lived.
The United States was the country that most successfully popularized eugenics, with large capitalists such as the Carnegie Institute of Steel King Carnegie, the Rockefeller Foundation of Oil King Rockefeller, and the Racial Improvement Foundation of Cereal King John Kellogg claiming to be financial sponsors of eugenics.
Amidst the whirlwind popularity of eugenics, countless people are being forced or unknowingly subjected to sterilization.
After the world's first sterilization law was passed in Indiana, USA in 1907 and sterilization surgery was established as a national policy, sterilization laws spread throughout the world.
Nazi Germany performed mass sterilization operations on people with disabilities and even committed mass murder of people with disabilities under the pretext of euthanasia.
It is shocking that even the Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland), known to us for their excellent welfare policies, were involved in eugenics.
Above all, Sweden was the first country in the world to establish a eugenics research institute called the National Institute for Racial Biology (not a private one) at the government level, and implemented much stricter sterilization laws than its neighbors.

Eugenics still dominates our daily lives.
So what about now? Has such horrific eugenic violence disappeared? Surprisingly, we still live in a society dominated by eugenics.
In response to the changing times, new eugenic systems, labeled as “anthropogenetics” and “medical genetics,” dominate our daily lives even more subtly.
Even if it is not necessarily a surgical procedure or euthanasia, we have developed ideal technologies that can prevent the birth of disabled people in the first place.
Representative prenatal tests commonly performed in obstetrics and gynecology departments include maternal serum tests, ultrasound tests, and amniocentesis.
These tests allow for the early detection of fetal disabilities, allowing selective abortion only for fetuses with disabilities.
Prenatal testing is ostensibly justified as a right for prospective parents to make 'informed choices' and is thought to provide fairly objective information.
However, prenatal checkups are essentially like a train ticket with a set destination.
Screening tests, such as maternal serum testing, that all pregnant women undergo already presuppose diagnostic tests, such as amniocentesis, which in turn inevitably presuppose elective abortion.
According to statistics from the United States and the United Kingdom, more than 85 percent of women diagnosed with Down syndrome through amniocentesis chose abortion.
Additionally, it is difficult to see genetic counseling based on prenatal testing and examinations as providing objective information.
The argument that if something is incurable, it should be prevented in advance is problematic because it overlooks the experiences of countless people with disabilities who view disability not as a simple tragedy but as an integral part of life.
And what about the social and economic pressures that lead people to choose abortion for their disabled children?
In a society dominated by a culture of discrimination against people with disabilities and with limited social support for them, can the choice of parents to abort their children with disabilities truly be considered a free choice?
Given that the neoliberal governing environment continues to produce "self-managing" subjects who internalize market principles and desires, demand for "genetic services" based on eugenics will only increase in the future.
Now, labor is no longer simply labor power, but rather the 'capital of ability' that workers possess as their aptitude and talent, and the level of wages varies according to this 'capital of ability'.
Therefore, individuals must operate themselves with an 'entrepreneur's mindset'.
Reading self-development books, investing in yourself through 'building up your specs', and plastic surgery and fitness to enhance your appearance are all examples of such practices.
From this perspective, people with disabilities due to genetic or congenital defects are vulnerable from the start.
In today's society, where competition is fierce and the importance of "immaterial labor" grows, can people with disabilities truly survive without exclusion? Isn't it more likely that the eugenicist desire to have children superior to others and without defects will intensify? Let's remember this.
Genetic services and biotechnology products sold on the market can readily be eugenic.

Challenging anthropocentrism
If we broaden our perspective a little more, we can see that the problem setting of 'disabled-non-disabled' is fundamentally connected to a specific perspective on 'humanity'.
This book points out that humanism, or anthropocentrism, reinforces a world centered on non-disabled people, and therefore is a worldview we must overcome to liberate people with disabilities.
Why does humanism, which at first glance seems to be the antithesis of eugenics, end up oppressing people with disabilities?
According to humanism, which is also the worldview of modern Western culture, 'all humans are nothing other than rational beings.'
According to this standard, all beings in the world are divided into rational beings and non-rational beings, and the world is also divided into the human world and the natural world.
This universal proposition, which at first glance seems to call ‘all human beings’ ‘equal rational beings,’ is very deceptive in that it implies the contraposition that ‘beings that are not rational are not human.’
In other words, this becomes a mechanism to discriminate against and oppress other humans who fall short of certain norms and normality.
Peter Singer, a thinker who cannot be left out in relation to 'overcoming anthropocentrism', also repeated 'anthropocentrism' by establishing a hierarchy in the value of life.
He argued that numerous acts committed by humans against animals are due to 'speciesism' and advocated for the rights and equality of 'non-human animals' rather than 'human animals'.
But ironically, when he argues for the rights of 'non-human animals' and talks about incorporating some animals into the world of 'persons', he cites 'reason' and 'language ability' as his reasons.
Although we have considered the existence of 'non-human animals', we have not been able to escape the hierarchy that assumes that certain lives are more valuable.
According to his criteria, while some animals are incorporated into the world of persons, some humans are, on the contrary, banished to the world of the impersonal.
I am talking about humans who have ‘reason’ and ‘language ability’ lower than that of animals.
Ultimately, the interpretation that Singer has transcended 'human-centrism' is overly simplistic and naive.
Rather, it would be more accurate to see him as accurately embodying the violent nature of 'human-centrism'.
As pioneering scholars like Spinoza in the 17th century and Lynn Margulis, who passed away in 2011, have observed, humans are in no way superior to other living beings or microorganisms.
We cannot even survive without a symbiotic relationship with them.
Even when we believe we can do something on our own, we are dependent on others or other entities.
This relationship is obscured the moment we take the view of evolution as a 'great chain of being'.
Once we recognize these innumerable relationships that make us who we are, there is no longer any need to assume a hierarchy that divides beings.
What is important is not the selection of lower or higher beings, but the meeting of one being with another.
Through that meeting, each other's capabilities may either increase or decrease.
For example, let's look at the relationship between a disabled person and an activity assistant (walker).
Walking is “a new activity created by two different bodies becoming one, rather than a non-disabled person doing the work that a disabled person cannot do.”
What about the following cries from severely disabled people who were forcibly taken away from the protest site and had their electric wheelchairs taken away by the police?
“You guys, that’s part of my body!” There’s no need to explain what kind of “enhancement of capacity” comes from the encounter between a severely disabled person and a power wheelchair.

Newly written independence and dependence
So, rather than trying to avoid being dependent on someone or something, shouldn't we be seeking ways to distort and improve our notions of dependence? We often equate "dependence" with "independence."
The 'independent living movement', which aroused strong aspirations among people with severe disabilities, was also not completely free from the dichotomy of dependence and independence.
According to the National Council on Independent Living, the current concept of independent living is also defined as “the participation of people with disabilities in all life choices and decisions, with minimal intervention or protection from others in life decisions.”
In other words, the core of this definition is the ‘right to self-determination.’
However, this 'self-determination' model has limitations in that it treats people with developmental or mental disabilities as irrational beings, once again reinforcing rationalist thinking.
Just as the goal of the disability movement isn't to recognize disabled people as normal, but to dismantle the very dichotomous framework that divides normal and abnormal, shouldn't we now recognize the deceptive nature of the stigma and oppression of "dependent beings"? Rather than countering with the assertion that "disabled people are independent," breaking down the very dichotomy of independence and dependence, recognizing that humans are inherently dependent beings, will create more fundamental change.
As we reframe the relationship between independence and dependence, our understanding of self-determination also changes.
Contrary to popular misconception, the right to self-determination does not mean the right of a subject to decide for himself or herself and do as he or she wishes in all circumstances.
A life where one always makes decisions on one's own is impossible for anyone.
The right to self-determination is a right realized when multiple decision-making entities depend on each other and communicate and coordinate their opinions and judgments.
Of course, before that, we need to break the common belief that only humans with reason and language can judge and communicate.
This is especially true when considering the self-determination rights of people with developmental disabilities.
If you omit the process itself and exclude that person because you think (communication) won't work anyway or because the process of communication and coordination is difficult, then that is clearly a violation of the person's right to self-determination.
It is difficult to limit the ability to judge and communicate to standard rational and non-developmentally disabled language expressions.
No one can predict what new capabilities will emerge from the meeting of people with different communication styles.